Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

same signs and codes (be this critical, negotiated or passive). In this case, for

Morley, the audience, as Nightingale explains, has a kind of ‘dual existence’ –

‘it is part of the mass audience and also part either of subcultural or com-

munal relations with others’ (Nightingale, 1996: 15). Interestingly, Morley

turned away from the audience–text interaction research of ‘Nationwide’,

to look again at audience–medium interaction in later work (see Morley, 1992).

Paralleling such a shift was the attempt to locate the audience. Is the

audience the same as ‘the mass’, or can it only be found in texts? The mass

argument is criticized by theorists like Ang (1996) who argue that the

audience-as-object is an invention of media institutions and corporations.

The entire superstructure of marketing exercises that audiences need to be

‘reached’ is founded on this myth. Audiences are not ready-formed recep-

tacles awaiting to be discovered but are constituted in the same operation

as the audience–text interaction.

Another sense in which audiences are possible without texts is

related to the way the growth of network communication has been accom-

panied by heightened levels of ‘audience participation’. This is especially

evident in the spectacular rise of ‘reality TV’ programmes and spectacle

features – these are examples of unscripted content (see Couldry, 2003:

Chapter 6). Of course they are still social texts in the formulaic way in

which they unfold, but they work much more on the principle of imagi-

nary substitution – the suggestion to audience members that they are see-

ing (a representative of) themselves on the other side of the screen, or at

least can imagine themselves doing whatever is being screened. Once

again we can see how a new genre allows us to reflect on old mediums

that have become acquainted with their ontological power.

The return of medium theory

Man, [McLuhan] understood the internet in the sixties. He was the inter-

net in the sixties. The world’s just finally caught up to him. He was the

internet in the sense he was in touch with the entire globe. ... He was

wired long before the editors of Wiredmagazine were born. This man was

truly wired. (Robert Logan in Benedetti and Dehard, 1997: 171)

In the previous chapter, we discussed the return of McLuhan, who, in

being the most prominent first-generation medium theorist of electronic

broadcast, has enigmatically become the subject of his own prediction –

that theoretically we can view old mediums from the vantage point of the

new, but that at the same time we attach ourselves to new media through

the objects of old media – what he called rear-view mirrorism.

In this chapter, I have suggested that both network and broadcast can

be viewed from the standpoint of each other. This is a corollary of the fact

that I have sought to reject a linear succession model of media forms. In

doing so, broadcast and network communication can be looked at from

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